


Don't Want a Second Chance

by agentx13



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Gen, sharon carter week
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-01
Updated: 2019-11-07
Packaged: 2021-01-16 10:46:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 5,895
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21269771
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/agentx13/pseuds/agentx13
Summary: Still reeling from recent - and less recent - events, Sharon Carter is approached by Sam Wilson and Bucky Barnes. Like her, they're adjusting to new, uncertain roles. Like her, they're trying to do the best they can with what they've been left. Like her, they're trying to help people despite the odds.They might just be what they all need.





	1. Chapter 1

They’d called, and she’d answered. She doesn’t know why. She should have told them to fuck off and leave her alone, but she couldn’t. They needed help, and she’d always wanted to help.

She can’t help but wish she’d grown up differently, though. She could have been someone selfish. She could have stayed in Richmond and become a Southern Belle and married some financier.

Would that be less heartbreak, or more?

She takes a breath and tells herself to snap out of it. She should never have fallen for Steve in the first place. Emotions only get in the way of the mission. They also get in the way of every other damn thing, but she certainly can’t allow them to get in the way of the mission. 

They’d called, and she’d answered. That’s the situation.

No, it isn’t. It’s only part of the situation. The situation is that she fell in love (like an idiot) and now no one will tell her what happened to him (not that she cares) and she’s been trying to find answers for months (for years) and no one will tell her anything, no one will even talk to her, all the people who might know and would tell her are gone. Except these two.

Maybe.

She doesn’t know how she feels about it, honestly. Maybe she doesn’t want to know. It’s not like things had always been easy with Steve. Maybe it’s best to pretend she’s over him until she doesn’t have to pretend anymore.

Fine.

She won’t ask them. Not about Steve. Just about why they called. She’ll pretend she’s fine. Pretend Steve is dead to her. Or at least, irrelevant to her. It’s fine.

She’s fine.

She spots them as they come in. Baseball caps. Sunglasses. Improbably tight shirts and leather jackets. She waves them over and tries not to stare at how ridiculous they look.

“I feel underdressed,” she says as they slide in across from her.

“You should,” Sam tells her. “You gotta dress in _style._”

“I hope you don’t mind meeting here,” Bucky says. “Sam has a bet he’s going to lose.”

“Is that why you called me?” she asks.

“No,” Sam says quickly. “We’re paying, by the way.” He gives a waitress a bright smile, and Sharon tries not to hide under the table.

“You’re both dressed like the Unabomber.”

“Oh.” Sam takes off his hat and sunglasses and tries again. This time, the waitress smiles back and heads over. “Two All-American Slams with scrambled eggs and one...” He looks at Sharon.

“Stack of buttermilk pancakes.”

“And coffee for the table,” Sam finishes brightly. He has a smile that people can’t help but answer back, and the waitress smiles and hurries away to place the order.

Bucky is quiet, contemplative, hands gripped together on the table. “We need your help.”

“Spy stuff,” Sam tacks on.

Bucky nods.

“Your such a good spy that you’re considered a myth,” Sharon reminds him.

“He got burned,” Sam explains.

“Singed,” Bucky corrects.

Sam mimics an explosion with his hands.

“Why me?” Sharon asked.

They don’t rush to answer this time.

“Everyone we know is trying to kill us,” Sam jokes.

Sharon and Bucky look at them. It sounds like an in-joke, but neither of them are in on it.

Sam sighs. “The government doesn’t like that I’ve got the shield. No one in the government can help us.”

“They know I’m with him.”

“So we need your help.”

She sighs. She supposes that being a nobody might have its advantages. At least to the few who remember she exists. “I need coffee.”

Even after she has coffee, she isn’t confident in her choice. She’s helping them.

She doesn’t know if it’s because she’s helped people all her life, if she simply doesn’t know how to help herself.

But helping them is better than sitting on barstools.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sharon suits up for the first time in a long time to go on a mission with Sam and Bucky.

She should have known it would all go bad.

She does recon for weeks. She takes Bucky and Sam’s research, does her own, and sets up a timeline that matches theirs. 

Their research is sound. They’re not idiots. But it isn’t complete enough for her taste. She doesn’t mention her suspicions as to why – that Sam is a soldier first, and Bucky still views situations from the Winter Soldier’s perspective without any of the Soldier’s perspective. His notes are about individuals and their habits, layouts of their homes and travel itineraries.

She looks at things differently. She looks at the how the company is set up. She pulls up the records for the building blueprints, sends Sam and Bucky to City Hall to get the parts that can’t be found online. She looks at bank accounts, news articles, hacks into multiple email accounts.

She moves up the timeline.

It’s a freaking agriculture company. On the surface, it should be an easy hit. Get in, get out. But agriculture is a reliable business, always profitable. It’s cutthroat. And its security tends to be people who got into the armed forces to kill people and now want to relax and kill people less often.

Should be easy. She looks at herself in the mirror and adjusts her collar. It’s an outfit similar to the ones she’d worn to SHIELD and the CIA. Sam and Bucky will be on the outside, helping guide her through and there in case of trouble. But she’s going in alone. That’s pretty much the only way she knows how to operate these days.

The company, Agro United, has its own in-house accountants, but it still needs to be audited once a year. The accountant who comes in to the audit is typically naive, overwhelmed, and easy to bribe, and Sharon sets them up with a quiet vacation to get them out of the way. She also has Bucky and Sam pretend to be employees at the auditing firm letting Agro United know that they’ll be getting a new accountant by the name of Beverly Lyons. 

It works, and she clears the first two stages of security. She hobknobs with the in-house accountants for a bit and takes the precaution of sticking a fob in a rarely-used computer. It’s programmed to send an email. Her backdoor in case of failure.

The target is the Agro United vault on the twenty-seventh floor. There, a virus called the blight waits in storage. Normally, under no circumstances would this blight be released. It’s old enough that current wheat has no immunity, and it could wipe out every crop in existence. But Agro United has finally developed a blight-resistant strain, which means all they have to do is release the blight with the new growing season, and when food reserves run low, make a financial killing by being the only corporation with healthy wheat. Sharon knows too well they’ll happily let people die of famine if it means making more money.

She grabs some notebooks and sets off. The accounting offices are on the fourth floor. Labs start on the eleventh. She gets there and takes her time chatting with the employees who want something to focus on other than their work. The point isn’t to be unseen. It’s to be seen and considered invisible. She tells them she’s looking for certain people, chats with them about how long the workday is, ignores Sam and Bucky bickering over the mic.

She gets to the seventeenth floor. Everything is going swimmingly still. Twentieth floor, and she gets off the elevator. It won’t go any higher. The floors above are only accessible by a VIP elevator, but the security for that elevator is much, much tighter on the floors below. She scrambles the signal on the cameras in the stairwell until she’s on the twenty-first floor. It’ll seem like a brief glitch to anyone paying attention, but she knows the security here gets paid enough to check it out.

She moves fast. There are fewer cameras in the VIP section. She avoids them easily. Gets to the elevator.

She gets to the twenty-fourth floor, and the elevator dings. She moves aside, already prepared with excuses.

When the doors slide open, she’s faced with a line of guns. 

“Carter,” one of them greets her.

She looks at him, seemingly confused. Bucky and Sam have fallen silent as they listen in over her comm. “Beverly,” she says. She fumbles with the notebooks to point at her ID, blinking at the guns in a daze. “Should I- should I have my hands up? I’m sorry, I don’t understand. I think – I’m _sure_ \- you have the wrong person.”

He grins. “I was at your aunt’s funeral. Wanted to make sure the bitch was dead. She ever tell you she fired my dad?”

Aw, hell. Sharon bites down a quip and launches herself out of the elevator, getting between them as they start shooting, then yell at each other to stop shooting. She ignores the burning pain in her leg and side, uses the notebooks full of paper like throwing stars. They won’t kill, but none of them want to get hit in the face by a three-ring binder.

She’s only aware of the voices in her ear after she’s taken down three men and is choking out another while kicking at another behind her. “Might need a hand,” she confirms breathlessly. 

She borrows one of their guns and shoots out a window.

“I thought Steve was the crazy one,” Sam snaps.

She grits her teeth and runs for it before the men behind her can come to.

He catches her, as she knew he would, and they rejoin Bucky in a parking garage blocks away. They stuff her in a car, bickering with each other and only interrupting to talk to her about her wounds.

She spends the time pulling up the email sent to her inbox. It has a link. A simple virus. All she has to do to activate it is press it.

She does, then puts her head back and kicks herself for not getting the blight.


	3. What we did wrong

There are better ways to get healthy, but Sharon tries to avoid them. She’d failed once again. This time, at least, she knows what she did wrong, but that doesn’t make it any easier.

She spars with Sam and Bucky as her wounds heal. She knows they’re taking it easy on her, but she can’t get them to do worse no matter what she does. They’re infuriatingly kind and understanding, compassionate, but no pity. Even as she knows how lucky she is, part of her resents it. She doesn’t deserve people being kind to her.

“If you’re blaming yourself,” Sam says over Chinese one night, “can I point out that this guy can’t sneak around that place dressed as a giant chicken?”

“I’m not blaming myself,” she mumbles, thinking of all the things she did wrong.

“Right,” Sam says. 

Later, when they’re alone, Bucky tells her, “I tried on the chicken outfit. I knew he was messing with me, but I thought it might work. But it smelled so bad I almost passed out. Don’t tell Sam.”

She gives him a look, wondering why he’d told her. “I won’t tell Sam.”

She doesn’t have time for the bullet wounds to heal. Her virus granted her a backdoor into the system, and she knows that when the insider trading deals are done, the virus will be released.

She corners Bucky one night. “He left you, too, you know.”

“He never had his tongue down my throat, either.”

“But it had to hurt, right?”

He shrugs. “You get over it.”

“How?”

He shrugs again.

She asks Sam the same, but all Sam says is, “I was never a sidekick. People are gonna see that now. You’re not a sidekick, either, you know.”

His confidence in himself helps more than his words. Because she was never a sidekick. She was- well, she doesn’t know anymore. If she had to say, she was an agent before. A ghost. And now, she’s not even that.

“Don’t talk so tough,” she tells him. “Since you still get dropped on the mat by a girl.”

He flashes a grin at her. “Promises, promises.”

After that, there’s nothing to do but drop him to the mat during their next sparring session.

She likes sparring with them. The realization surprises her. But they’re both so different, and they both think they have different strengths and weaknesses. Bucky telegraphs his next move less, and when she realizes that, she notices how often she telegraphs her own moves. She tries to do less, and Bucky tries to do less. It becomes almost a competetion.

“This is some kung fu crap,” Sam announces, “and I will not stand for it.”

“Go get dinner, then,” Bucky suggests. There’s very little in his voice to indicate it’s merely a suggestion. “Pizza.”

Sam goes, muttering about getting Hawaiian just to spite Bucky.

When they’re alone, Bucky says, “The Steve you knew wasn’t really the Steve I knew. That’s why I don’t think I minded so much.”

She’s still thinking about pizza toppings. “What?”

“Why it didn’t hurt so much when he left. Don’t get me wrong. I’ll always love the guy. But the scrawny little asshole from Brooklyn? That was the Steve I knew.”

“He was still that guy. Inside.”

“To you, maybe. To me, he was...” Bucky hesitates. “He wouldn’t let me be,” he said at last. “He kept wanting me to be who he remembered, but I’m different now. Just like he’s different. And when he left, I just thought… _Finally._ I get to be free.” He looks sideways at her. “Nobody thinks about me without thinking of him. Not even me. And I’m finally getting to know myself and live in the world without him.”

She knows what it’s like to feel so wrapped up in someone else, shouldering the consequences of actions tied to them, that she can’t think of herself without thinking of him. “So this is a chance for you? Some sort of rebirth.”

“I’m a butterfly,” he deadpans. “Caw, caw.”

She feels a smile coming and bites her lip. “Pretty sure that’s not the sound butterflies make.”

“I’m a very strange butterfly.”

“You’re strange, all right.”

He grins at her, and it’s sheepish and somewhat charming and she can almost see why he was such a ladies’ man so long ago.

She gives him a nudge. “Get us some water. I’ll start cleaning up.”

Sam comes back with the pizza, and they sit and watch Item #742 on Bucky’s Catch-Up-To-The-Present List, Parks & Recreation.

Sharon puts her pizza down. “I know what we did wrong.”

“Got caught,” Bucky says.

“No,” Sharon says. “_I know what we did wrong._”


	4. cups and cups of coffee

It never ceases to amaze her how much Chinese food goes into planning.

Day after day, she and the others train. Night after night, they watch TV, plan, and eat Chinese. Sometimes they mix it up with pizza or American. Usually it’s Chinese. 

Sam and Bucky support her idea, but the enthusiasm doesn’t entirely last. It calls for work. So much more work. She tells them what to do, what more they need, tells them where to go and how to get everything. She double-checks, triple-checks, and quadruple-checkd everything. This is their last chance. The deadline is looming. It should work, yet it might not, and there is so, so much work involved. And yet, Sam and Bucky are willing to do it. That’s what matters.

It surprises her how much it matters. To have people who support her. Her own parents hadn’t supported her when she wanted to go to SHIELD. Most of her superiors hadn’t supported her because they said she had so much to learn.

She tries to sleep and suddenly realizes that she doesn’t know what to do with that support, doesn’t know how to handle the lack of inertia, the lack of pushback or criticism. She hops to her feet, then sits heavily on the couch. It's two in the morning. She should let them rest. 

But now her mind buzzes. She’d been handling this wrong, she realizes. Handling them wrong. 

How does she have more breakthroughs with them in less time than she had in the previous thirty years of her life?

She gets to her feet again. Goes to the table to look over the plans. Looks to Bucky’s door. He’s more likely to be awake. Sam snores when he feels safe enough to sleep deeply, and she can hear his snore through his door. She turns back to the plans. Let them sleep. Let them rest. 

Bucky wakes her up the next morning. He’s trying to make coffee as silently as he can, but making breakfast is, by nature, a non-silent undertaking. “Sorry,” he says when he sees her watching him.

“It’s fine.” She runs her tongue over her teeth. She doesn’t want to think about how bad her breath must be. “So long as some of that coffee’s for me.”

He nods. “Neither of us can put up with Sam without it.”

Sam whistles as he comes out of the bathroom. When he sticks his head out of the hall, Sharon notices he’s only wearing a towel. “What y’all saying about me?”

“You’re intolerable,” Bucky says.

Sam winks and finger-guns him. “It’s a beautiful morning! Gonna be a great day!”

They stare at the hallway as he disappears into his room. 

“Two coffees,” Sharon says.

“Three.” He pours them each a cup and gulps his down before pouring another. “You know, we could have gotten a cabin with a room for you, too. You don’t have to sleep on the couch.”

She actually sleeps on the floor because the couch is murder on her back, but she won’t tell him that. He can probably tell from the way her sleeping bag is still set out on the floor. She shrugs. But part of her knows it’s because she didn’t feel like she belonged when she first joined up with them.

She still isn’t sure if she belongs. Isn’t sure what her place is. Isn’t sure if she ever had one. 

“Working with a team is new,” Bucky says.

“Is that what we are?” She recognizes her tone, the slightly sarcastic intonations from the diner when she’d first met up with them. “A team?” He looks at her, and she relents. “A very tiny team.” She doesn’t try to drink her coffee as fast as he had, but she still guzzles it as fast as she can handle.

“Biggest team I’ve been on in seventy years.”

She stares at him.

“What.”

“Trying to figure out which old joke I should go with, but none of them are actually funny? It’s like… You’re so old, it’s just… sad.”

“Ha, ha.”

She slides her thumb along the ceramic of her cup. “I’ve been a bitch, haven’t I.”

Sam comes out of his room, dressed in a polo shirt and jeans. “We prefer the words, ‘hurt,’ and ‘working through the healing process.’”

She grimaces. “So you noticed. I didn’t even notice.” Her eyes narrow. “You didn’t leave your towel on the floor in your room, did you?”

“It’s on the doorknob, _Mom._”

She points at the papers on the table. “Why don’t you hit the books. I need a shower if I’m going to put up with you two.” She glances at Bucky. “Maybe I’ll even save you some hot water.”

“Worst team ever,” Bucky mutters.


	5. mission, remixed

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sharon, Sam, and Bucky team up for an op for the first time.

As before, the building has excellent security. 

This time, though, they have several advantages. The first is that they are somewhat more prepared. The second is that Sharon is confident their plan is unforeseen and unexpected. The third is that Leslie Knope’s can-do spirit has likely infected them.

Sharon hopes they don’t all die. It wouldn’t be very Parks & Rec of them.

Somewhat to that end, Bucky had used his contacts to get her a suit very much like a SHIELD tactical suit. It’s a very pale gray, almost white. “We’ve got the red and blue covered on this team, but we need more white,” he tells her. “For Team America.”

“Bad movie,” Sam says. “Don’t call us that.”

“You’re both such nerds,” Sharon says, trying to ignore the implication that she’s part of a team. The temptation to think that she might have found a place where she might finally belong is painfully strong, but she knows better than to give in.

Nonetheless, she’s currently wearing the suit. With a jacket, it just looks like she’s wearing white leggings. 

“Building going dark in three. Two. One.” She presses the button, and all the lights for blocks around go black. Lights flicker back on as generators kick in. “Monitoring outgoing calls. Bucky? You good?”

“Great.”

It’s a tricky shot to make. She doubts she could make it. They all know Sam doesn’t have the sniper training to make it. Even for Bucky, though, it’s tough. The schematics they’ve pored over show that the generator will still kick in several utilities accessible from the roof. If they can get an EMP off there, if Bucky can successfully make the shot, they can overload the backup generator.

She waits. Seconds pass. She knows, logically, that he’s adjusting his calculations based on the wind, the temperature, the traffic, the millions of things that have to be taken into account. He’s just steadying his breathing. But with nothing happening, she can’t help but start to get anxious. 

The lights go out.

She nods to herself, not wanting him to hear her breath of relief.

The rest happens like clockwork. Calls go out to electric companies. Sharon reroutes the key ones from the building to Sam, who’s already armed with all the information he needs to seem like the real utility company. He gives his own and Bucky’s information, and tells them they’ll be by shortly.

They wait seven minutes. Sharon’s nerves are on edge the whole time. She turns her attention to the task at hand. She sets the zipline to the opposite roof. Ziplines across. Presses herself against the wall to the stairwell. Waits. 

Waits.

Waits.

Sam and Bucky go inside. Their disguises are just enough that they don’t look too familiar to the different security crew in place. The bona fides that “the phone company,” i.e., Sam, had sent over, check out, and they’re guided to the main system.

“We need to check the whole system,” Sam says. “You got a backup generator?”

“We told you not to do a Jersey accent,” Sharon murmurs. 

“You know how it goes, man,” Sam continues. “Greatness gotta go all out.”

The guard, harried by superiors impatient to get everything back online, agrees to lead Sam upstairs, and Sharon mutters to herself as Sam and his terrible accent drone in her ear.

“Have fun,” Bucky tells her softly. “I had to listen to him practice.”

“And you couldn’t stop him?”

“Going into the cellar now. May lose connection.”

He goes quiet, and Sharon waits. The door opens, with Sam jostling past the guard to get to the fenced-in utility area. It distracts the guard just enough that Sharon can slip through.

It takes a bit of sleight-of-hand, but she lifts someone else’s identity card and pins it to the office outfit she’s wearing over the tactical suit. With her hair up, glasses, and a change in posture, she hopes she doesn’t look enough like herself for anyone to recognizable.

“Guard out,” Sam says.

“Only one? I’m on my twelfth,” Bucky retorts.

Sharon doesn’t respond. She adheres to the plan. Even prepared for the security measures in place, even with so many of them down with the electricity, it’s tricky. It takes her longer than she intends.

“I’m running out of guards,” Bucky complains.

“I’m running out of guards,” Sam repeats in a mocking voice.

“What was that?”

“Good to go,” Sharon says. She’s already on the stairs, working her way down. She spots security officers three floors beneath her, scanning IDs with a battery-operated device. The team – the _group_ couldn’t have taken out everything operated by a battery. Still, it’s an irritation. “Wouldn’t mind a distraction,” she mutters quietly

Bucky answers. “One’s on the way.” She hears shouts, and watches the officers below freeze, then run to the nearest door. She picks up the pace.

By the time she’s hit the fifth floor, she’s regretting not ziplining off the building.

“You clear?” Sam asks.

“Almost.” She tussles her hair, musses up her outfit. She stumbles out of the stairwell in the lobby and calls to a nearby security officer. “Sir? Sir, there was- a man on the stairs. He shoved me- almost fell down the stairs. I- I don’t think he works here?”

She pants as the officer comes over, his hand on the gun at his waist. “Which way did he go, ma’am?”

“Downstairs. He had-” She holds her hand next to her ear and shakes it around. “Like a voice? In his ear? Saying if they couldn’t get it, they’d destroy it? Something like that. I don’t understand. Are we safe here?”

“Of course,” he says, his voice tense.

“Guess who just reported a bomb threat to the police?” Bucky murmured.

Another officer offers Sharon a hand, and she grabs it, pretending to steady herself as he guides her outside. “Thank you,” Sharon says. At the security desk, the phones are ringing endlessly.

As soon as she’s outside, she quietly thanks the officer again and waits for him to go back inside to follow up on the evacuation orders he’d doubtlessly just received. She straightens and walks down the street as she puts her hair and outfit to rights. “Everybody out.”

“This is the part I’ve been dreading,” Sam groans.

“Shut up and catch me,” Bucky tells him, breaking a window and jumping out.

“You have no idea how much you weigh,” Sam snaps.

She watches from below as Sam jumps off the roof, catching Bucky just in time. She sighs in relief without realizing it and goes to their rendezvous point.


	6. crash goes the spy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sharon multitasks while saving people and the planet.

“You’re sure you want to make the call,” Sam says.

Sharon nods. “You’re Captain America. You can’t blackmail or extort people. Bucky is the Winter Soldier. He can’t do it. A recording of this would dominate the news for weeks. Me? I’m nobody. I’ll be in the news for a couple days, tops.”

“This president, _nothing_ dominates the news for weeks,” Bucky says. “Makes me miss a time before TV.”

“We get it,” Sam groans. “You’re old.”

Sharon holds up a finger. “Put it on pause or take it outside.” She hits send and presses the phone to her ear. “Mr. Calloway. I’m glad you could take this call. Do you know why I’m calling?”

She hears a snort. “You're part of the crew that tried to steal something from my company today?” he demands. His voice is deep. Slithering. “You failed.”

“Actually, we didn’t.”

“We still have what you tried to steal.”

“No, you still have what we tried to steal be_fore._ We stole something else this time.” He doesn’t respond. “We have the cure. It’s pointless to release the blight now. We’re already making sure other wheat manufacturers have the cure at their disposal.”

“That’s unfortunate,” Calloway says.

Sharon frowns. 

“Oh, well. Enjoy your victory. You really showed us.” He hangs up.

Sharon follows suit. Locks eyes with Bucky, then Sam. “He’s not panicked or even angry. I think he’s already released the blight.”

Bucky immediately sweeps over to his computer.

“So his crops will survive,” Sam says, “But all the others will die. That’s a a couple years with a wheat shortage. Maybe more, depending on if seeds get infected, how much they hold back.”

“He’ll buy up those companies, become a monopoly,” Sharon continues.

“And as millions of people die because of the wheat shortage, he’ll eventually be a billionaire,” Sam finishes. “I think I hate this guy.”

Bucky spins the laptop around. “Flight trajectories. He sent word to dust the crops with the blight after our break-in today. But they’ll have to wait until nightfall. Farmers will know if the dustings are scheduled or not. They have a better chance of dusting more of the fields if it’s dark.”

“Must have thought we were getting too close,” Sharon murmurs. She skims over the data. “We’ll have to call in backup. And split up.”

“Rhodey will help,” Sam says. “Get the Avengers going.”

Sharon nods. “Call him on the way. We’ve got to move.”

Bucky takes his bike. Sam has his wings. She wishes she had more than a Volkswagon Beetle.

* * *

She takes the closest one. With her car, she doesn’t have a choice. The airfield is local. The sun is setting.

She’s on the phone, calling every number she can remember. She calls in SHIELD. She calls in friendlies at the CIA to use their connections. She calls former associates who have moved on to the FBI or diplomatic work.

The hangar doors are opening. Sharon hangs up – on Nick Fury, no less – and breaks into a run. She’s not the only one running. Another woman is running toward the plane. Sharon quickly evaluates. Jeans, loose shirt under a plaid long-sleeved shirt. No tactical gear. Screaming things like, “WHO’S IN THERE!”

Not who she’s here for.

She hears the propellers hum to life. She yells at the other woman to get back, but her voice is lost under the propellers. She pulls her gun out, keeps running as the plane appears. Yellow. Decked wings. Single pilot.

The man in the cockpit sees her at the same time she sees him. She quickly braces, shoots twice, pauses, shoots two more. Two bullets clear the propellers, and he jumps in his seat, his temple bloodied. She can’t tell if he’s dead. He slumps downward, but the plane continues rolling on its way. She can’t get a clear shot at him.

He holds a gun up and shoots without looking. Not dead, damn it. The gun is pointing in the other woman’s direction. Sharon jumps and tackles her to the ground. She has to sweep their legs out of the way as the tires pass beside them.

“WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON?” the woman shouts.

“They’re going to poison the crop!” Sharon yells back. And with that, she’s running after the plane.

“Not without me, you’re not!” The woman runs after her.

Something she’s never told anyone, absolutely is no one, is that she doesn’t actually like heights. She isn’t terrified of them. Not anymore. But that had taken work. Practice. And she is never going to like them.

She jumps onto the bottom wing and ignores the sickening feeling in her gut. She can vomit later.

The tops of her thighs hit the hard metal of the wing edge. She scrambles farther up. She wishes she had one of Bucky’s EMPs right now. 

The pilot shoots at her; her grip slips. She desperately grabs a rod connecting the top and bottom wings. The plane is bobbing off the ground. There’s no more time.

She swings around. She still has bullets left. Three. Three bullets left and no time.

She shoots. Grazes him. He shoots back; bullets bounce off the metal rod by her hand. She shoots again. Catches him in the temple.

Her sigh of relief is cut short when she sees the road up ahead. 

“Seriously?” she demands.

And of course, people are driving past as if there isn’t a plane flying straight at them. Probably just minding their own business, figuring the plane will lift in time. Or maybe, somehow, they just don’t see it.

“This is gonna suck,” she mutters. She crawls along the wing like a child, reaches into the cockpit.

She crashes the plane.


	7. we means we

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sharon, Sam, and Bucky hang out after the mission.

“Way better than a restaurant,” Sharon says. She spreads out on the chair and looks over the lake. By her hand is a bottle of water. Her other arm is still in a sling and will be for weeks longer. Her bruises, hidden underneath her shirt and the bandages around her ribs, are tinged with green and yellow as they fade. 

Bucky sits on a blanket nearby. “Reminds me of Wakanda.”

“Only because that’s the only place you’ve ever seen a damn lake without getting shot at,” Sam says. He’s in the chair beside her, sunglasses on and utterly, completely relaxed.

Bucky shrugs.

Sharon tries not to grin. “Such a New Yorker.” 

“New Yawker,” Sam corrects.

“New Yaaaawker.”

“New Yah-ker.”

“I hate you both,” Bucky says without animosity.

Sharon lobs a pine cone at him.

“Not really much of a celebration, though,” Sam says. “We _did_ kind of save the day. And not all of us had to crash a plane to do it.”

“You both crashed your planes,” Sharon points out.

“We weren’t on them at the time.”

“Nitpicking.” She looks to Bucky. “That’s nitpicking, right?”

Bucky’s expression and tone are serene. “It _is_ a good idea not to be on planes when they crash. Helps with longevity.”

Sam clears his throat. “As I was saying. At least when we saved the day before, there was at least, you know. Mention on TV.”

“They can’t mention this on TV,” Sharon tells him. “If people knew how close they were to almost dying of hunger, there’s no telling how they’d respond. It would probably make more work for the politicians, too. Establish more safeguards and things like that.”

“We’ll choose a more PR-friendly way to save the world next time,” Bucky promises.

“Oh? You two have something in mind I should know about?” Sharon asks.

Bucky turns to her. “I said ‘we,’ Sharon. Plus, you’re still on pain pills from the crash. We’d feel bad if we left you somewhere and you, I don’t know.”

“Crashed another plane,” Sam chips in.

“Shot your way out a window.”

“Tried to take on an entire building’s worth of security on your own.”

“I could have done it,” Sharon mutters. “I didn’t think he’d recognize me.”

They both say in unison, obviously not believing her, “Uh-huh.”

“At least I’m not as bad as Steve.”

“_Nobody’s_ as bad as Steve.” Again, they speak in unison. This time, there’s more fervor to it.

“Can’t believe how old he’s gotten,” Sam says. “Dumbest-ass move he ever made.”

“Impressive,” Bucky agrees, “when you consider all the dumbass moves he’s made before.”

Sharon is quiet. She thinks of Steve, how she hasn’t seen him in so long, how he’s lived so much without her. How he evidently always wanted her to be someone else. How he always wanted Bucky to be someone else. How not even Sam, in the end, was worth sticking around for, and now everyone wants Sam to be someone else.

She remembers talking with Bucky about living in Steve’s shadow. How they finally have a chance to be their own people.

Sharon has always lived in shadows. She isn’t sure who she is without them.

But she thinks she might be willing to find out.

Firm, she says, “Steve can suck it.”

Sam laughs; Bucky grins. 

She grabs her water bottle. “To the new Captain America. And to the new Team America.”

Sam grimaces. “You know that movie is about-”

“It’s our thing now,” Sharon says.

“We’re Team America,” Bucky informs him.

Sharon points to Bucky. “Buck. Make us a jingle.”

“Worst team ever,” Sam says with a grin.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And we're done! Thanks for reading! I'll probably next see you in March for Sharon Carter Month. Already got some fics written for it, and working on more.
> 
> Hope you enjoyed the fic!


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